- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Mobile Browsers That Stick Their Noses Into Your Business
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '25

22 May '25

'Some figures hit my desk this morning about mobile browsers and the data they collect that I found interesting enough to want to pass on. Some of this won’t surprise anybody, such as the fact that Chrome is the most data-hungry mobile browser app. What might come as a surprise to many, is that Chrome is the only browser that collects financial information, such as payment methods, card numbers, and bank account details. It also collects contacts from a phone’s address book. The figures came from Surfshark, the cybersecurity folks with an eponymous VPN, which took a look at the 10 browsers it identified as the most popular. Topping the list was Chrome, which presents a somewhat mind-boggling list of privacy intrusions that includes everything from contacts and financial information to data on location, browsing and search history, content — such as photos, videos, audio recordings, uploaded files, and other stuff — usage data, identifiers — device ID, user ID, or IP address — as well as even more data that’s not identified by the study.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/05/mobile-browsers-that-stick-their-noses-into-y… One thing that I wasn't aware of under Android, you will have a unique Ad ID: Settings > Privacy > Ads > Opt out of ad personalization Cheers, Peter

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KDE Is Getting a Native Virtual Machine Manager Called 'Karton'
by Peter Reutemann 21 May '25

21 May '25

'A new virtual machine manager called Karton is being developed specifically for the KDE Plasma desktop, aiming to offer a seamless, Qt-native alternative to GNOME-centric tools like GNOME Boxes. Spearheaded by University of Waterloo student Derek Lin as part of Google Summer of Code 2025, Karton uses libvirt and Qt Quick to build a user-friendly, fully integrated VM experience, with features like a custom SPICE viewer, snapshot support, and a mobile-friendly UI expected by September 2025. Neowin reports: To feel right at home in KDE, Karton is being built with Qt Quick and Kirigami. It uses the libvirt API to handle virtual machines and could eventually work across different platforms. Right now, development is focused on getting the core parts in place. Lin is working on a new domain installer that ditches direct virt-install calls in favor of libosinfo, which helps detect OS images and generate the right libvirt XML for setting up virtual machines more precisely. He's still refining device configuration and working on broader hypervisor support. Another key part of the work is building a custom SPICE viewer using Qt Quick from scratch: If you're curious, here's the list of specific deliverables Lin included in his GSoC proposal, though he notes the proposal itself is a bit outdated [...]. For those interested in the timeline, Lin's GSoC proposal says the official GSoC coding starts June 2, 2025. The goal is to have a working app ready by the midterm evaluation around July 14, 2025, with the final submission due September 1, 2025. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/20/2223215 Cheers, Peter

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Microsoft Open Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '25

20 May '25

'Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source, Microsoft said Monday. The tool, which allows developers to run Linux distributions directly in Windows, is available for download, modification, and contribution. "We want Windows to be a great dev box," said Pavan Davuluri, corporate VP at Microsoft. "Having great WSL performance and capabilities" allows developers "to live in the Windows-native experience and take advantage of all they need in Linux." First launched in 2016 with an emulated Linux kernel, WSL switched to using the actual Linux kernel in 2019 with WSL 2, improving compatibility. The system has since gained support for GPUs, graphical applications, and systemd. Microsoft significantly refactored core Windows components to make WSL a standalone system before open sourcing it.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/19/1654225 Cheers, Peter

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Final Bookworm-Based Raspberry Pi OS Released Ahead of Debian Trixie
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '25

20 May '25

'The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just released a new version of Raspberry Pi OS, their recommended, freely distributed operating system for all Raspberry Pi devices. Still based on Debian 12 ”Bookworm,” this build is likely the last one in this series before Debian 13 “Trixie” arrives later this summer.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/final-bookworm-based-raspberry-pi-os-released-ahead-of… Cheers, Peter

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Raspberry Pi Connect Goes Stable
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '25

19 May '25

'After just twelve months of public testing, Raspberry Pi Connect—the company’s browser-based remote-access service—officially graduated from beta with the release of version 2.5. According to Raspberry Pi engineer Chris Lowder, the platform’s install base has already topped 100,000 registered boards. Earlier iterations of the software relied on frequent polling: each Pi woke up at regular intervals to ask Raspberry Pi’s servers whether anyone wanted to connect. That design was easy on the cloud side—traffic remained predictable—but it quietly chewed through users’ data plans and power budgets. Version 2.5 replaces that pattern with a single, persistent HTTP connection. Now, when a user presses “Connect” in the web dashboard, the server broadcasts a wake-up event to the board, initiating the handshake on demand instead of on a schedule. Beyond wake-ups, every Connect client has been sending status heartbeats to keep the dashboard in sync. The new release debounces that chatter, dropping superfluous packets and compressing each remaining heartbeat by roughly 50 percent.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/raspberry-pi-connect-goes-stable/ Anyone got any experience with this that they'd like to share? Cheers, Peter

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Spies hack high-value mail servers using an exploit from yesteryear
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '25

16 May '25

'Threat actors, likely supported by the Russian government, hacked multiple high-value mail servers around the world by exploiting XSS vulnerabilities, a class of bug that was among the most commonly exploited in decades past. XSS is short for cross-site scripting. Vulnerabilities result from programming errors found in webserver software that, when exploited, allow attackers to execute malicious code in the browsers of people visiting an affected website. XSS first got attention in 2005, with the creation of the Samy Worm, which knocked MySpace out of commission when it added more than one million MySpace friends to a user named Samy. XSS exploits abounded for the next decade and have gradually fizzled more recently, although this class of attacks continues now. On Thursday, security firm ESET reported that Sednit, a Kremlin-backed hacking group also tracked as APT28, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, and Sofacy—gained access to high-value email accounts by exploiting XSS vulnerabilities in mail server software from four different makers. Those packages are: Roundcube, MDaemon, Horde, and Zimbra.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/spies-hack-high-value-mail-servers… Cheers, Peter

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Google Restores File Permissions For Nexcloud
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '25

16 May '25

'Nextcloud has been in an ongoing battle with Google over the tech giant revoking the All Files permission from the Nextcloud Android App, which prevents users from managing their files on their server. After a blog post and several tech sites reported on the issue, "Google reached out to us [Nexcloud] and offered to restore the permission, which will give users back the functionality that was lost." Nextcloud is working on an app update and hopes to have it pushed out within a week.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/15/208221 Cheers, Peter

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You Can Now Upgrade Ubuntu 24.10 to Ubuntu 25.04, Here’s How
by Peter Reutemann 15 May '25

15 May '25

'After almost a month of waiting, Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) users can finally upgrade their installations to the latest Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) release. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots on how to perform the upgrade! Ubuntu 24.10 was released on October 10th, 2024, and will be supported for a couple more months, until July 2025. Since this isn’t an LTS (Long Term Support) release, users might want to consider upgrading to Ubuntu 25.04 as soon as possible. Compared to Ubuntu 24.10, the Ubuntu 25.04 release ships with a newer kernel for better hardware support, namely Linux 6.14, the Mesa 25 graphics stack series for a better gaming experience, the latest GNOME 48 desktop environment, as well as some of the most recent GNU/Linux technologies.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-upgrade-ubuntu-24-10-to-ubuntu-25-04-here… Cheers, Peter

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Introducing oniux: Kernel-level Tor isolation for any Linux app
by Peter Reutemann 15 May '25

15 May '25

'When launching privacy-critical apps and services, developers want to make sure that every packet really only goes through Tor. One mistyped proxy setting–or a single system-call outside the SOCKS wrapper–and your data is suddenly on the line. That's why today, we are excited to introduce oniux: a small command-line utility providing Tor network isolation for third-party applications using Linux namespaces. Built on Arti, and onionmasq, oniux drop-ships any Linux program into its own network namespace to route it through Tor and strips away the potential for data leaks. If your work, activism, or research demands rock-solid traffic isolation, oniux delivers it.' -- source: https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-oniux-tor-isolation-using-linux-nam… Cheers, Peter

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European Vulnerability Database (EUVD)
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '25

14 May '25

Talking about vulnerabilities... 'The European Vulnerability Database (EUVD) is now fully operational, offering a streamlined platform to monitor critical and actively exploited security flaws amid the US struggles with budget cuts, delayed disclosures, and confusion around the future of its own tracking systems https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/' -- source: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114501509209870711 Cheers, Peter

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